On Top of the World

Your hosts discuss Dave's new book: World History Through Case Studies: Historical Skills in Practice. Dave tells us about how studying things like the history of veiling, yoga, or the World Cup will engage your students and help them think like a historian. Ditch the textbook and buy Dave's book!  Bloomsbury Amazon  

The new AP World History Course and Exam Description (CED) is out and we have to figure out the best and most responsible way to teach it.  In this episode, Matt interviews Eric Beckman, a veteran teacher and winner of the 2018 William H. McNeill World History Association Teacher Scholarship. What exactly has changed? Where and how should we start this new truncated course? Are Texans taking over World History? How can we best create an anti-racist and global course within the parameters of the new standards?  With our goal of helping students do better on the exam, making the course more coherent, and making the course less Eurocentric, this episode will help both novice and experienced teachers grapple with the 2019 standards from College Board.    Links: Learning, Online by Eric Beckman Eric's Twitter The AP World History: Modern CED  

Are mountains of bird sh*t, a doctor giving his patients cancer, and the width of screw threads central to the rise of American imperialism? Yes! Matt and Dave discuss How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr. This a text that will leave North American readers like Matt and Dave, saying "Oh sh*t! That really happened?" It is also history that weaves together mass politics, insane personal stories, and the twists of fate that shaped the changes and continuities of American history beyond and across the boundaries of "logo map." Recommendations:  Dave - A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine Matt - Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 by Andrew J. Torget How English Became the Global Language by David Northrup Dave's book is available for pre-order right now! World History through Case Studies: Historical Skills in Practice by Dave Eaton

Dave and Matt return from a winter break to discuss the future of AP World and review James C. Scott's book Against the Grain.  Recommendations: Dave: Webb, Humanity's Burden and Klieman, "The Pygmies Were Our Compass" Matt: Wrangham, Catching Fire Music Eric Jones, Angkor Feist, Let It Die MIMS, This Is Why I'm Hot

Texting in Class makes a triumphal return! Matt and Dave review Panorama: A World History by Laura J. Mitchell and Ross E. Dunn.   Recommendations: Dave - Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE by Craig Benjamin Matt - The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott Dave - Grand Valley Journal of History for undergraduate students   Music: Angkor - Eric Jones I Can See For Miles - The Who Atomic Bomb - William Onyeabor 

Matt and Dave are joined by special guests Henrik Lohmander and Peter Nicholson, computer game designers and historians with Paradox Interactive. We discuss their fascinating jobs working on the historical strategy games, how to break into historical game development, and the challenge of balancing history and player fun.  Recommendations:  All - Imperator: Rome Henrik - A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Lives, Richard M. Eaton Dave - Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE, Craig Benjamin Matt - Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, Geoffrey Parker   Music: Angkor, Eric Jones Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Tears for Fears  Caesar, Ty Seagull  Personal Jesus, Depeche Mode 

New episodes are on the way! In the meantime, you can listen to Matt and Dave talking through some primary source analysis best practices, document analysis, and lesson ideas. We hope that you or your students find this episode helpful! We originally did this as a video stream for the fine folks over at Fiveable but on the condition that it would be free to the public and that we could share it with our listeners too. Here is the link to all the documents used in the episode.    

Put on your masks and get out your account books! Matt and Dave are joined by a very special guest, Dungeon Master Rob! They discuss Seth Dickinson's groundbreaking fantasy novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Although it is a work of fiction, the book's approach to race, queerness, and empire can help us as world historians break free from some of the limitations of the archive.  Happy Halloween and happy the Monster Baru Cormorant day!   Links: Dungeon Master of None, Rob's podcast (Matt also co-hosts) The Traitor Baru Cormorant  The Monster Baru Cormorant   Recommendations: Dave - A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe Dave - Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o  Dave - Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India Nicholas B. Dirks Rob - The Divine Cities Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett  Matt - Purchasing Whiteness: Pardos, Mulattos, and the Quest for Social Mobility in the Spanish Indies by Ann Twinam   Music: Angkor, Eric Jones  Rebel, Rebel, David Bowie Empire State of Mind, Jay Z. feat. Alicia Key Mask Off, Future 

Dave and Matt sit down with Michael Vann to talk about his new graphic history, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam. Your hosts discuss the joy of finding unexpected things in the archive, the necessity of writing a colonial urban history as a world history, the importance of cultural history and thick description, and the opportunities that graphic histories give teachers in the classroom.  Also, check out Mike's excellently-titled article in the Journal of World History: Sex and the Colonial City: Mapping Masculinity, Whiteness, and Desire in French Occupied Hanoi   Recommendations: All - The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam by Michael G. Vann and Liz Clarke Micheal - Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders by Adam M. McKeown Dave - Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi by Kenda Mutongi Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation by Jennifer Anne Hart Matt - Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott   Music: Angkor by Eric Jones Le Festin by Camille from the Ratatouille soundtrack  Bullet with Butterfly Wings by the Smashing Pumpkins Godzilla by Blue Öyster Cult

Reminder: Free registration for the 2018 Great Lakes History Conference! What is the Cold War to a World Historian? Dave and Matt use Odd Arne Wested's Bancroft-winning book as a launching pad to examine the longue durée of the 20th-century and a global approach to the US-Soviet conflict that centers decolonization and the "Third World."   Recommendations:  The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times by Odd Arne Wested  Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer